💡 Check out Sofia's amazing blog and this exercise here
Challenge
“The image below is a screenshot from a zoo live cam. It was taken on January 15, 2023 at around 2pm local time. Please answer the questions below:
a) In which zoo are these polar bears located?
b) What was the temperature at the time of the screenshot?
c) What were the exact coordinates of where the bears were lying down?”
First Look
There aren’t any huge landmarks in this image we can rely on. This being a zoo, however, might narrow it down a bit. Judging from the lush vegetation it doesn’t seem to be very cold even though this was allegedly shot in January. Knowing this we can prioritize where we start our search if we can’t get a good match with image based searches. Maybe the US, Southern Europe, Australia? Let’s find out.
Google Lens Does It Again 🔍
We first check if an image reverse search can save us some time. Google zooms in on the polar bear but we’re more interested in the enclosure, so we draw the image selection box to fit the whole image. The first result is another write-up for Sofia’s exercise, but we’ll ignore that. There are lots of polar bear enclosures, but two of the images stand out. A blog post about the San Diego Zoo and an Instagram post that looks like a perfect match.
Thank you Brooksy Bear 🐻❄️
The full size picture confirms we have a perfect match that’s even taken from roughly the same angle. According to the location of the Instagram post, the picture was taken at the San Diego Zoo. That matches the other Google result. We’ll make sure that this is in fact correct when finding the exact coordinates.
Enhance! 🔍 Source: cass.spinelli
Exact Location
On Google Maps we find a dedicated location called “Polar Bear Plunge” in the San Diego Zoo. We drop in our little yellow Street View person and quickly find an image taken from a viewing platform in 2009 that looks promising. In our source image the ground is covered with soil, whereas the Street View picture is bare stone. The source also features a small ramp which we don’t see here. But that could have all been added at a later time since we’re looking at a 14 year time difference between the Street View picture and our source photo.
Street View Image from 2019
Time to find some more material to compare. We get lucky on YouTube. The channel “San Diego Zoo Kids” posted a video in 2018 that leaves little doubt this is the correct spot. In particular we can line up,
- structural features and discolorations of the boulder 🟢
- the flipped tree root in the enclosure 🔴
- the trees and a roof in the background 🔵
Top: Source Image, Bottom: YouTube Video
In Google Earth we can line up everything nicely, including the blue-green roof in the distance and set down our pin.
We got a match
Temperature
Since we have the date, time, and location, we should be able to query historical weather data to answer the question about the temperature. One website I really like for this type of data is https://www.ventusky.com/. It provides an interactive world map with visualizations about all types of weather data. Free to use, no sign-up required. Thanks Ventusky ❤️
According to the website, the temperature on 15 January, 2023 was around 13°C between 1 and 2 PM.
Temperature According to Ventusky
To make sure, we check another source for historical weather data: Weather Underground. According to their daily observations the temperature at 1:51PM that day was 63°F which corresponds to approximately 17°C, quite a lot higher than the 13°C reported by Ventusky. Let’s check a third source to be sure. World Weather Online reports between 14°C and 15°C for that date and time.
Pivoting back to Ventusky we find an information banner that their temperature data isn’t taking into account elevation or that temperatures are generally slightly increased within big cities. They suggest that city centers are often 1°C-3°C hotter than other areas. If we add 2 degrees to our initial 13°C we end up with 15°C, which I feel is a good middle ground to settle on.
Answers
A: San Diego Zoo
B: Approximately 15°C
C: 32.734456, -117.154589
Final Remarks
It’s crazy how many of these tasks can be solved (or at least facilitated) with Google Lens. We got a bit lucky because the first dead giveaway Instagram post was published in February of 2024, after Sofia created the exercise. To be fair, the second Google result screencapped above would’ve probably taken us to San Diego as well and that was posted back in 2018, but nevertheless, it made it a little easier for us.
Solving this without Google Lens or other image reverse search tools would’ve been much more difficult but probably still achievable. Sifting through live cams of zoos with polar bears that are located in a region that fits the vegetation would have sooner or later taken us to San Diego.
Oh and by the way, here’s the live cam of the polar bear enclosure housing Chinook, Kalluk and Tatqiq 🐻❄️ 🐻❄️ 🐻❄️